Back in the Black: Use Budgetary Software to Keep You on Track

Keeping a financial worksheet at the office may be sufficient for some companies. But if your office is like most, a more complex program is necessary to ensure that all of your financial ducks are in a row. Two of the most commonly used tools, Quicken and Microsoft Money, may be ideal for small offices and meeting personal budgetary needs.

Quicken 2009

The new and improved 2009 version of Quicken® is one of the most user-friendly, easy to understand, and interactive budgeting and finance software on the market. Quicken will organize you and help track your bills and spending. This software allows users to backup all data online and simplifies the process of paying bills. What's more, Quicken information easily integrates into TurboTax® for annual tax preparation and the program will even help you find the right home mortgage loan program for your budget.

The deluxe edition of Quicken will also handle your personal investing. In addition, you can utilize the software to create cash-flow reports, which allow you visualize your current financial situation. Beyond budgeting, this software will help you keep your spending in line with what you can afford, as well as track all bills and debts. The Starter Edition of Quicken 2009 is $29.95 and can be downloaded directly from their website.

Microsoft Money

As a long-time user of Microsoft® Money, I can certainly discuss its merits. More than just writing out a budget and keeping a checkbook register, Money allows users to track every dollar they spend. Therefore, analyzing where your money is going is a snap. While the manual data entry and setup process can be tedious, if you enter all information from your monthly bank statements, Money will create a detailed image of all your accounts. Also, one feature that I find very useful is the category and subcategory reporting, especially at tax time.

If I want to see exactly how much I spent on prescription medications for the previous year and print out a line-itemized list of this spending, Money has me covered. All I have to do is go to the category that I created called "Personal Health: Prescription Medicines," define the date range, and click print. After handing this report to my accountant and providing the necessary receipts, I'm good to go for tax accounting. And, this is true with any of my spending. So, if I wanted to know why I was short on cash one month, I can simply go back to the previous month and view a detailed report, graph or summary of my spending. Of course, Money offers other options, such as direct-statement downloading from my bank, thus eliminating the need to manually enter spending; bill-paying; income versus expenses calculation; multiple accounts tracking; and more. The software is also reasonably priced, starting at $19.99 for essentials and up to $69.99 for the "Home and Business" version.

Moneydance

Another highly beneficial budgetary and money-management program is Moneydance. This intuitive and power-packed software offers all of the benefits of Money and Quicken, and more. In the banking department, Moneydance provides its users with a module dealing with exchange rates. What's more, reports from within Moneydance can be exported to ".csv" and ".html" format for Internet use. And, unlike Quicken or Money, Moneydance is compatible with Linux Operating System - a true benefit to users. A free trial is available at http://www.moneydance.com/, and the full version costs $39.99.

With such beneficial resources on the market, there's no reason tough economic times should cause anyone to lose sight of their own financial goals and spending.